100 Yellow Doors

2:33 p.m.

Angry at himself for enjoying it.

"Of course you liked it."

Julien shook his head. "I didn't."

"The kill's thrilling, Julien. It's the best part of being us."

"I didn't kill anyone."

"But you could have—"

"Shit, Sera!" Julien roared, jumping to his feet. Again, it seemed only he had any emotion to display. Sera's face was entirely blank below her wispy bangs; he was talking to a brick wall. "What's it going to take for you to fucking get it? Not all of us take pride in the taking of other people's lives. Not all of us parade around like we're better than humans solely because we're not human. Not all of us are okay with being monsters!"

"Does it matter if you're okay with it? That's what you are," Sera snapped back. Though her voice was level, there was fire in her eyes that hadn't been there a second ago. Julien hated it, but he was afraid of that fire. "When you're around all your human friends, that time traveling chick and her boy toy, all you can hear is their heartbeats. All you can smell is their blood. All you can think about is how easy it would be to tear them apart. Why do you think that is, Julien? Do you think it's because you're meant to be friends with them, or something ridiculous like that?"

"I would never," Julien said, clawing at his shirt. He felt the words as he said them, like a tuning fork struck against a bone, reverberating within his body. He felt them with more depth than he had felt anything else. "I would never hurt Iman."

"One of these days you're going to realize it's not about what you would or wouldn't do," Sera said, a light chuckle on the end of the sentence. She took Julien's hand, working her fingers over his knuckles. "Your body wants what it wants. Either you exhaust yourself fighting it, or you"—she shrugged then, grinning at him—"give in."

She was inches away, but he wanted her closer. He wanted a night so far away that he could remember but bits and pieces of it: a Paris landscape, Sera's body in his hands, the glint of chandelier light in a champagne glass. Sera was the moon, pale and glorious and celestial, and he was but an earthly sea, moving at her whim. It didn't matter how far he got from her. She would always drag him back.

"Seraphine," he said. He didn't finish the word before she kissed him.

Her kisses were not the warm, furious kisses of life, but the frigid, distant kisses of death. Her lips moved over his, empty chest to empty chest. Julien wrapped his arms around her, pulling her in by her waist, and let himself sink below the ice.

She pulled away. When she smiled, two fangs glittered over her lips. "Jule," she said. "Come with me."

He had so many questions. Where to? For how long? Just us? In the end, however, he acknowledged none of them.

"Okay," he said. The word tasted like a mistake. "Okay."

Iman drove to the nearest public library, parked her car in the frontmost parking spot where she could clearly be seen from the door, and sat there. She switched the air conditioning off, then on again when the hot air began to seep in. She flipped through radio channels. Britney Spears, no. Bruno Mars, not quite. Cigarettes after Sex—soothing enough.

She was going to sit here until she forgot about lunch with her sisters, or until Beck got off his shift and walked outside. Whichever came first.

Beck came first. A flurry of movement towards the entrance caught Iman's eye, and she looked up, noticing Beck at the exact moment he noticed her. His eyes went round beneath his glasses for a moment, a question—or several—salient in his expression as he peered through the windshield. His mouth formed her name, eyebrows furrowing.